Monday, December 30, 2013

Egypt urges Arab states to brand Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group

Cairo University students supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and
deposed President Mohammad Mursi shout slogans at the university's
campus in Cairo, Dec. 29, 2013.(Reuters)

AFP, Cairo
Monday, 30 December 2013

Egypt urged Arab League members Monday to enforce a counter
terrorism treaty that would block funding and support for the Muslim
Brotherhood after Cairo designated it as “terrorist” group.
Cairo
also wants the League’s members to hand over wanted Islamists linked to
the Brotherhood to which deposed president Mohammad Mursi belongs.

Egypt’s
military-installed government listed the Brotherhood as a terrorist
group last week, after officials accused the movement of a suicide
bombing that killed 15 people in a police station on Tuesday.

The
Brotherhood, the largest Islamist movement in the region, has a
presence in most Arab countries. It condemned the bombing, which was
claimed by Al-Qaeda-inspired militants based in the restive Sinai
peninsula.

Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty
said Arab League members that signed the 1998 counter terrorism treaty,
should enforce it against the Brotherhood.

The treaty coordinates anti-terrorism measures between signatories.
“The
signatories are responsible for implementing the treaty,” Abdelatty
told AFP, adding the members would have to stop financing the group and
hand over Brotherhood fugitives to Egypt.
An Arab League official said 18 of the Arab League’s 22 members had ratified the treaty.
The Arab League said it has notified its members of Egypt’s designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group.

Mursi
and dozens of Brotherhood leaders face trials on various charges,
including colluding with militants to carry out attacks in Egypt.

Some of the group’s leaders have fled the country, and its media operation is now based in the United Kingdom.

The movement had won every election in Egypt after the 2011 overthrow of strongman Hosni Mubarak.

It
successfully fielded Mursi in the country’s first free presidential
election in 2012, but he lasted only a year in power before the military
toppled him amid massive street protests demanding his resignation.

Since
then more than 1,000 people, most of them Islamists, have been killed
and thousands imprisoned in a crackdown on his supporters.

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